That Time of Year Again

George Square: bettering Dundee's Christmas lights since ever.

On my way to the weekly journalism lecture to hear more of journalist-turned-lecturer Eamonn O'Neill's effusive stories, I couldn't help but notice the George Square ice rink being put together; the first real sign of the presence of Christmas. The immediate reaction is one of overwhelming happiness and relief that University work is temporarily put on hold, but a flurry of new questions spring to the mind that always piles on needless stress: What present(s) do I get for my family? Do I have enough money to fund Christmas shopping? What song is the X Factor winner going to murder this year?

It's always the same every year (for me at least), I have in my head what I want to buy as presents but when I decide to begin the shopping voyage - usually about five or six days before the deadline -  most places are crammed to the door with fellow panic-buyers and everything is bumped up in price. Then there's the mundane task of finding the accessories: cards; wrapping paper; gift tags, etc. Oh how much I would give to rewind about 15 years and only worry about the pending arrival of Santa Claus and whether or not he remembered to bring my Transformers-themed Power Rangers.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Christmas season, however I will continue to nag about smaller, perhaps insignificant, details about this time of year. First of all there's the amount of football games that are called off 'due to a frozen pitch'. Not only does this limit the amount of football on the TV, it also makes decrypting the league tables a difficult task, calculating how many games in hand one team has over the other and seeing teams with poorer playing surfaces inactive for as long as six weeks at a time.

Much better than the though of Wagner getting #1

Then there's the Christmas songs. I can say that I haven't heard the likes of Slade or Wizard as of yet this year, maybe due to me distancing myself from any shop that's displaying tinsel or any Christmas decoration of any sort. There's also the X Factor fiasco and of course the newly invented Facebook petitions vying for the Christmas number one, something that used to have relevance. Personally I'd like to see a new truly awful Christmas song by someone like Justin Bieber or JLS getting the number one so that Simon Cowell's army of wannabe superstars will retreat at this time of year and also filtering out Wham so that it's only played every hour rather that every half-hour.

Apart from that though, I think it's a wonderful time of year! As I didn't have a job last year, my Xbox was made as a sacrifice so that I could buy presents, but as long as everyone's as happy as a six-year-old finding out that the milk and carrots are missing on Christmas morning, it's all worth it!